geekmass

If you have a few young ones of your own, you can attest to experiences of having a grumpy baby that was sick from a cold and ran a fever or maybe was layered in too much clothing on a warm day. Well, next to a gentle hand and a thermometer, inventor Chris Ebejer wanted a faster way to detect when a baby’s temperature was on the rise due to overheating or illness.

One of the key questions posed about the updated iPhone 3G S is just how much of a performance gain are you getting by upgrading from previous hardware? Joel already pointed out in his review of the new iPhone that the device is clearly faster, but some figures would be nice to back that up.

Let the Gears of War 3 watch commence. Lead designer Cliff Bleszinski recently told print rag Official Xbox Magazine UK, “I’m not burned out on that at all.”

Asked if he felt “shackled by the franchise,” Bleszinski responded, “No. There’s only been two Gears games, man. There’s still plenty of opportunities for things you can do in a cover-based shooter and there’s still a lot of stories to tell in the Gears universe.”

BlackBerry users will now have yet another model to be envious over. Research In Motion (RIM) has announced a new BlackBerry model called the BlackBerry Tour. The BlackBerry Tour is a 3G smartphone that is expected to be available to CDMA customers in North America.

The smartphone supports 3G EV-DO Rev A technology in North American as well as other 3G networks abroad. The Tour comes with a 3.2 MP camera with flash, zoom, autofocus and image stabilization. It has a full HTML web browser that also supports streaming audio and video.

The iPhone 3G S is on the mission to keep the buzz alive but it is apps that will keep consumers glued to the platform.

I bet Apple’s incremental iPhone 3G S upgrade underwhelmed you a bit.

While a better camera, magnetic compass, video recording, voice control, faster CPU/GPU and double the storage are all nice, it’s the iPhone OS 3.0 and SDK 2.0, not the hardware, that will keep Apple ahead of rivals, hopefully creating new revenue streams for developers.

Take In-App Purchase, a new feature of the iPhone OS 3.0 that lets you purchase new content directly in apps, things like e-books, additional levels or items in games, etc.

For example, Gameloft’s racing game Asphalt 5 will let you buy extra cars and new tracks from within the game. Since such sales are processed by the App Store infrastructure, the 70:30 revenue sharing still applies. Will users take the bait?

Two new revenue streams: In-App Purchase and Bluetooth sharing
Joel Evans, our chief geek, thinks this is a “huge revenue stream,” citing Pocket God as the prime example. The game owes its long-standing top 10 ranking to an ever-expanding content brought via free upgrades. With In-App Purchase, such updates could be turned into paid extras. “Enter OS 3.0 and the developer could offer up unique characters, a different story-line, you name it, all for additional money,” Evans said.

One big d